Today, we are starting a series in Acts. The timing is right. As a church, we are re-centering ourselves on the person of Jesus Christ, and in the book of Acts we see what happens when a community of people is also centered upon Jesus. As I’ve studied in Acts, I am struck again and again by the early church: its character, its fire, its trials, its adventure, its power, its love, its effectiveness…
Here are some of the things we will engage with in this book:
- – prayer
- – the Holy Spirit
- – care for the poor
- – church governance
- – leading through change
- – sin, judgement and forgiveness
- – clash with spiritual powers and demonic forces
- – people using Jesus & religion to make themselves rich or earn a reputation
- – letting cherished traditions go for the sake of the salvation of people
- – Christian minority in a non-Christian context
- – conflict in the church
- – miracles
- – preaching the gospel
- – cross cultural interactions
- – persecution and opposition from a hostile public and a hostile state
- – hypocrisy in the church
- – discipleship and life change
- – evangelism
Do any of these things sound like they have to do with the life of our church today? And, of course, towering above it all, foundational to it all, permeating all of this book is the presence and person of Jesus Christ.
In other words, this book addresses everything any Christian church needs to know. The great preacher Martin Lloyd-Jones has said of Acts, Live in this book, I exhort you. It is a tonic, the greatest tonic I know of in the realm of the spirit.
For the truth of Acts has never changed: God’s kingdom advances as Christians (by preaching and living, empowered by God’s Spirit) witness to the risen and returning Jesus. That’s true today in this city, too.
So let`s go…
The book of Acts.
Who wrote Acts? Luke did. Acts is the sequel to his gospel. Acts begins with these words: In the first book, O Theophilus… The ‘first or former or previous book’ is the Gospel of Luke, which is also specifically addressed to Theophilus, and so what Luke says at the beginning of his gospel serves as a good introduction to Acts as well:
Many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the
word have delivered them to us. So it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.
Luke has a concern for historical accuracy, and this concern is so that his readers – Theophilus then, and us today – may have assurance that what we have been taught is true, because faith is not just about ‘what I feel in my heart’, or ‘finding my truth’. Faith that is not grounded in reality is delusion, it’s self-medication. And Luke wants his readers – Theophilus and us – to know that Jesus really was born to a virgin, he really did die on the cross, and that he really did overcome death by his resurrection. Luke wants us to know that what the gospel says Jesus said and did, he really said and did. It’s true. This is history.
A couple years ago I belonged to a club called ‘Toastmasters’, where people practice the skills of public speaking. A Toastmasters Club holds an annual ‘tall tales contest’, where contestants tell a story that is too fantastic to be true. Whoever can lie the most convincingly, will get the trophy.
Many people think that the church’s proclamation of Jesus wins the tall-tales trophy. That as ‘religious literature’, it can’t really be taken seriously as history. The gospels are at best, embellished, and at worst, outright fabrications. But this is no tall-tale. Luke the historian has carefully researched so that he can give Theophilus a reliable record. He talked to eyewitnesses. He had interactions with the apostles. We can believe what he has written, and what we have received.
Luke’s goal in Acts is pretty specific: to trace the spread of Christianity from its beginnings in Jerusalem northwest to Rome itself, the heart and capital of the Roman Empire. By so doing Luke is affirming Christianity as not only the fulfilment of Judaism, but as a global faith, for all people.
The spread of Christianity occurs by what Luke calls the increase of the Word of God and the simultaneous growth of the church. It occurs despite all obstacles, and Luke makes these repeated references that thread throughout the book and tie the narrative together.
– At Pentecost in chapter 2: After Peter’s preaching, There were added that day about three thousand souls
– 2:47 – And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
– 4:4 – Many of those who heard the word believed, and the number of the men grew to about five thousand.
– Chapter 5: More than ever believers were added to the Lord.
– 6:7: The Word of God continued to increase, and the number of disciples in Jerusalem multiplied exceedingly.
– 9:31 The church throughout Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit it multiplied.
– 12:24 – The Word of God increased and multiplied.
– So the churches were strengthened in the faith, and they increased in number.
– 19:20 So the word of the Lord continued to increase and to prevail mightily.
Throughout Acts you see these two things together: the increase of the Word of God and the growth of the church. The Word of God is living and active, and where it goes, it bears fruit. The church grows and is strengthened when the Word of God is declared, taught and lived.
So to become a Christian in Acts is to ‘receive the Word of God’ (Acts 2:41; 8:14). That’s why the apostles ‘spoke the word of God’ (8:25).
That’s why at the time of the Reformation, Luther and others defined a true church as one where the Word of God was rightly taught.
It’s why we are a people of the Word, and why preaching has traditionally been the central act of our worship service. It’s why the most important facet of my own ministry is the preaching of the Bible. If we long for a renewed work of God in our lives and in our church it will begin with a renewed immersion in the Word of God.
What place does the Scripture have in your life? What step can you take?
Because there is no deepening of the soul and no growth of the church except by the Word of God. Our knowledge of Jesus, experience of Jesus and love for Jesus are directly proportionate to the place that Scripture has – in your life, in your church. The increase of the Word of God and the growth of the church occur together.
We will see this repeatedly in Acts.
Acts begins with the passage we read today, chapter 1 verses 1-11.
Luke addresses the book to Theophilus, and as we have already seen, Luke is concerned that Theophilus knows the historical reliability of what he has been taught.
Notice that Luke says that in his first book he dealt with all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day when he was taken up. Not ‘what Jesus did’, but ‘began to do’. When Jesus walked the earth, proclaiming the kingdom of God, healing… when he died bearing on himself God’s judgement for the sins of the world, when he rose again…. This was the work he began to do. The implication is that what he records in Acts, his second book, is the work that Jesus continues to do. So this is not really the Acts of the Apostles, a title that has been attached to the book since about the middle of the second century, 100 years after Luke wrote it. Nor is it the Acts of the Holy Spirit, a title some have suggested recently as a more appropriate title. The best title would be ‘The Acts of Jesus Christ’.
Because even though the Holy Spirit is a dominant presence in Acts, and the chief narrative follows the apostles Peter and Paul… Jesus is the focus of the book. It is about him. He is the chief actor. He is the subject of the teaching and activity of the church. It is his Holy Spirit that is at work in his church.
The church is Jesus’ church. The mission is Jesus’ mission. I can’t emphasize this enough: it is never about what we can do for Jesus. We don’t ask him to bless what we’re doing. We ask him: ‘What is it you are doing? What do you want us to do?’ This is absolutely central to what it means to be the church.
Luke then summarizes the 40-day period between Jesus’ resurrection and ascension with these words: To them [the apostles] he presented himself alive after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.
It’s no accident that Luke highlights early in this account that Jesus appeared frequently to his apostles and gave many proofs that he, the crucified one, was risen and very much alive. Jesus’ resurrection shows up in every sermon in Acts. Wherever they preached the gospel, they proclaimed that Jesus who died has been raised.
And by the end of 40 days, the disciples knew nothing so certainly as they knew that Jesus was alive. He had appeared to them many times. 1 Corinthians records several such appearances, including one to over 500 people at one time. He ate with the disciples. He spoke to them. He came to them in Galilee, in Jerusalem, on the road as they were walking… And their encounters with Jesus, resurrected and powerfully alive, transformed them.
Christianity, alone of the great world religions, is not centred upon the teachings of a spiritual figure from the distant past, but upon a living, present and active Lord. And the knowledge and service of him is at once mankind’s most basic need and everyone’s most high calling. That truth informs and inflames our sense of mission:
Here is someone spiritually hungry and seeking. They don’t need ‘Christianity’ or church or religion. They need Jesus.
Here is a friend whose marriage is crumbling and they are in despair. They don’t need relationship techniques or attitude adjustments. They need Jesus.
Here’s someone who is entirely secular and entirely unhappy… Here is someone struggling with an addiction… Here is someone scarred with the hurt of the past so they can’t function today… They don’t need therapy or to believe in themselves. They need Jesus.
Here is your neighbour…. Here is your co-worker… Your friend… Maybe here are you… And it is Jesus himself, risen, alive and present who is needed. The Jesus who said, ‘Come to me and I will give you rest’. The Jesus who said, ‘I have come that they might have fullness of life.’ The Jesus who said, ‘Come, follow me.’ Jesus lives, and there is nothing needed by anyone so much as to have the living Jesus at the centre of their life.
So the question for each of us today is: Is the living Jesus at the centre of your life? Not just, ‘Do you believe he is alive?’ as a theological or doctrinal affirmation, but is the living Jesus central to your life? I am not the most important person in my own life. Jesus is. And is the living Jesus central to our church? Because it is the reality of the living Jesus that informed and inflamed the church in Acts. It was the certain knowledge that Jesus was alive that turned the defeated, demoralized disciples of a crucified leader into the world-transforming community that they became
So our mission as a church is not to make better people, or converts to ‘Christianity’. It is to know the living Jesus, and make him known. Or, in Acts terms: to be Jesus’ witnesses.
He said: But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.
Witnesses to whom? Witnesses to the Jesus whom they had known so closely for three years, whose miracles they had seen, whose teachings they had received, whom they had seen die, whom they now knew was alive and glorified. “You will witness to me”, Jesus said. He didn’t say, ‘Pass on my teachings’. He said, ‘You will be my witnesses… In Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.’
Jerusalem: the city in which they were staying. The two surrounding provinces of Samaria and Judea. And then beyond Israel itself and to the whole world. And this becomes the outline of the whole book of Acts: Chapters 1-7 in Jerusalem… in Chapter 8 the gospel comes to Samaria and 9-12 throughout Judea and even over the borders in Damascus and Antioch. And after chapter 13, the spread of the gospel throughout the Mediterranean world until it reaches Rome.
If that commission came to us, which it has – to be witnesses to the living Jesus – if it came to our, if it came to you. what is our Jerusalem? What is the starting place for our witness? It might be your family: building faith at home with your children. It might be your community: the people who live to your right and left, across the street. It might be our workplace or club or classroom.
Our Jerusalem also includes this community right here: the people who live around this building. Just by virtue of the fact that we have erected a church building in this community makes us the visible presence of Christ, and therefore gives us the calling to be the actual presence of Christ: his love, his truth, to a community who needs Jesus more than they need anything else. Part of our renewal these days needs to be a serious look at our relationship to this community. Are we the witness of Jesus here?
That’s why we open our church building in the summer to the Soccer Club on rainy days when they can’t be outside. It’s why we had a community sale and a community lunch. And so we host our neighbourhood. Now we need to think about what it looks like for us to be ‘out there’ in our neighbourhood.
What about our Judea and Samaria: just outside our more familiar circles? Our broader city, or our larger region. We support street ministry and the Pregnancy Care Centre. What might it look like to partner with them? Serve with our hands and feet and voices, not just our cheques. Can we serve the Board of Education? or the Health Region? or the bank or construction business? We certainly can. We have people and money and a building. All we need is a little creativity, a little humility and a little courage.
But it doesn’t stop there, either. The mandate of world mission is ours, too. We do some. We support quite a number of people who are making Christ known in the world.
What would it look like for us here at this church to expand our concern for the world beyond our missions cheques? Maybe not everyone can afford to go. But most of us could. And it doesn’t have to be a ‘church trip’. We could just go. Ever thought about it? Why not take a week of your vacation with ministry to disaster regions, overseas to improve supplies of water, or go somewhere and build, or teach, or volunteer your nursing training, or dental skills, or computer savvy… Have you ever thought about it? Have you ever asked Jesus if he is thinking about it?
What is your first step – Jerusalem? Samaria? world?
And whatever area we choose, we do it in the name of Jesus. We do these things because we love Jesus and want to serve him
Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, the world…. to be witnesses of Jesus. That hasn’t changed. So that’s what we want to do.
But notice that Jesus said – ordered! – that they must not leave Jerusalem until they Holy Spirit had come upon them. They were not just to take their marching orders, roll up their sleeves and get to work. Why not? Because they couldn’t do it. If they could, it really would be the Acts of the Apostles. But this mission was the work of Jesus. And so the Spirit of Christ would come on them, and fill them with divine power to be effective witnesses to Jesus. The whole book of Acts demonstrates the power of the Spirit: He added power to their words so that Peter could preach and three thousand would fall under deep conviction, and submit to Jesus. There was a power in their community life: their care for each other was powerful and made people stand in awe. Their were healings… encounters with the demonic spiritual powers… other miracles…
There’s no way that these redneck Galileans could have launched this movement in this way, with churches in every major Mediterranean city all the way to Rome in less than three decades. No. But when the Holy Spirit fell upon them and clothed them with fire and power… We will see that throughout this book: it is God’s Spirit through the Apostles.
And it will only be by His Holy Spirit in and through us that Jesus’ advances his kingdom. If someone comes to faith through our testimony or our ministry, it will only be because the Holy Spirit has moved.
So we are dependent on and desperate for the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. In a couple weeks when we come to the Pentecost passage in chapter 2 we’ll talk more about this, but we realize today that this is not about our church doing our job, but about our being filled with, sensitive to and obedient to the leading of the Holy Spirit of God.
Then, after he has commissioned them, he is lifted up before them and a cloud hides him from their sight. Not a cloud of fog, but the cloud of glory. When God’s presence descended on Mount Sinai and later filled the tabernacle and the temple, it was manifested as a cloud. When Jesus was glorified before Peter, James and John at his transfiguration, the cloud of God’s glory enveloped them. So here at his ascension, Jesus is taken up in a cloud of glory. Not that heaven
is ‘up there’, but this manifests to the disciples that Jesus is exalted, lifted up, elevated to the place of honour at the right hand of God.
Look how this passage ends, though. As the disciples quite naturally stare up at the sky, two angels appear and draw their attention back down to earth? Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? For this Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven will come just as you saw him go into heaven.
Having just had their Lord depart from them with his commission to them to be his witnesses at home and abroad, they receive the promise of his return.
And it is in that hope that we, too, go about our mission. For Jesus is coming back. We witness to the risen Jesus, who is alive, who still changes lives and redeems people… and to the very same Jesus who is returning. We are rooted in the historical event of the resurrection and have our faith fixed on the certainty of his return.
Do you live as though Jesus is returning, and all this ‘stuff’ will just vanish?
As the hymn writer put it: Let us labour for the master from the dawn till setting sun. Let us talk of all his wondrous love and care. We only have till setting sun. We don’t know when that is. Jesus himself said it was not for us to know. But we do know that he is coming. So we do not know how long we have. There may not be a next week in the life of that person God has placed in your circle. There might not be another New Year….
And so the church in Acts, and we at our church: Christ builds his church as:
– we witness to the risen Jesus – Is the risen Jesus at the centre of your life?
– in the power of the Holy Spirit – Are you/ sensitive and obedient to God’s Spirit, or are we trying to do it on our own, apart from him?
– in our homes, communities and world – What is your next step?
– until Jesus comes back. – And he is surely coming back.
May we, the people that are at this church, faithfully witness to the risen Christ. May the Word of God increase and bear fruit, and may many people be added to the Lord.
Amen.